Monthly Archives: March 2008

I was feeling all confident yesterday thinking that “hey, I’m at the armholes now, the v-neck steek is set, I can just do gradual decreases now and every row will go faster, this will be a piece of cake to be done by April 2.” And then another voice reminded me, “but you still have to do the sleeves, dumbass.”

Hm. This may be too much of a challenge to get done in 3 weeks. Will that stop me from trying? No. I’ll just maybe start laying in some small sweater-recovery projects now… ;)

I’d really REALLY appreciate it if you would stop re-posting my own blog posts on your site. Somehow it does not surprise me that your domain has been suspended.

No love,
Me.

EDIT: BAH. The site is still up, it’s just that hotlinks to it are labelled as “suspended”. Seriously, whoever owns “knitting.theknittingguild.com” can go ahead and screw off. They’re just re-posting all sorts of other bloggers’ posts (including this post, with a few select sentences changed, I might add), and naturally have no contact information posted about who runs the site.

Does anyone know how to find this out and in which direction I should start throwing a piece of my mind? I tried a ‘whois’ search and got nothin’.

When I blithely decided earlier this week to have all 3 of my Works In Progress be sweaters and thus to cast on for the Urban Aran, clearly I was either being very well prepared for the weather, or daring the fates to openly mock me. Either way, around these parts we are going to get pounded again this weekend with upwards of 20cm more snow between Friday night and Saturday night. Maybe there really is someone up there going, “you want more sweater weather? Well check THIS out, HAH!”

You know it’s bad when the weather news reads “First winter storm of March hit on Tuesday…” because if there’s a “first” storm then there must at least be a 2nd, if not a 3rd or 4th in store. The snowbanks are getting to be higher than people. I mean dudes, we’ve been getting snowfall every 5 days since the end of January, and while that’s normal for many other fine parts of the world, Southern Ontario is starting to collectively weep because we can’t remember a time when we wore something other than boots and 5 layers of clothing to go outside. I remember looking at Liz‘s photos of Oakland, California a few weeks ago and thinking, “huh, that’s weird, there’s no snow in those photos.” And then having to remind myself “OH. Some times people live in places without snowstorms. Right.”

I am hugging my sweaters-in-progress, for they are of many colours and are good to me.

‘Glowing’ is zipping along and I am planning on casting on the 2nd sleeve tonight while the first flakes fall. It feels so lovely and I am already thinking ahead to what other sweater projects I would like to make with Mission Falls 1824. It’s soft and bright and sturdy and – unless things go horribly awry during washing, which I hope will not – is worth every penny.

‘Venezia’ is coming along at a slower pace but is also a happy sight:

I was, admittedly, a little unsure about the colour combination for a good long while, but now that the body is taking shape I think it’s growing on me quite well. My plans are to make modifications for a v-neck instead of the boatneck (thank you, Ravelry!) and I should be able to start that soon.

Venezia is the only sweater with a theoretical deadline. On April 2nd I have made plans travel to New York again, and I want (a finished) Venezia to come with me. I’m heading down to visit Rebecca, enjoy some post-term touristing and relaxation, and catch the Yarn Harlot on tour too. (I wish I could go in Toronto on April 1st, but sadly I have to “teach a class” that day or some such nonsense). Ever since my jaunt down to NYC for Rhinebeck I’ve been wanting to visit again and see more of New York and I’m so excited.

I hope your weekends are enjoyable…I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll get not just some knitting done but also some real work as well. Pesky revisions.

I’m so heartened to hear that some of you miss reading about Beatrice the Cat. I admit that while it’s sort of nice not to have a fuzzy alarm clock pouncing on me at 6:30am every day, I do miss the fuzzy cuddles.

She was clearly taking her notes from this cat, though. Silly cat that won’t go outside on a sunny winter day when she’s covered in fur from head to toe.

I need another sweater project like I need a hole in the head, I know. But see, I went up to the Listowel Spinrite sale again on Saturday (with Kim – blogless – and also Steph and Martha, which made for a pretty hilarious car ride), and I told myself that if I hadn’t cast on any thing with the yarn I purchased on the previous sale trip (which was last August), then I had to do so in the car.

I’d finished a pair of socks the day before, and Venezia just wasn’t the right car trip knitting anyhow, so I pulled out one of the bags of Shetland Chunky I’d purchased in August and set out armed with the Street Smart booklet. You know, that booklet, the one everyone on the internet and their hamster has knitted something from. I purchased the booklet in August as well to help me use the Shetland Chunky (which was $9 for a bag of 10 balls, and my willpower was not strong enough to pass that up), but just hadn’t gotten to it yet. We’ve still got a bit of sweater weather going, so maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Admittedly, this yarn isn’t something I would normally go out and buy for myself if it wasn’t on sale. But it’s still 25% wool we’ll forget for a moment that the rest is acrylic and feels soft, and it’s chunky which means speed is definitely on my side. And the colour is lovely. I’m enjoying getting more practice with cables, and am finally getting the hang of the cabling without a cable needle technique. It will definitely be a cardigan for me, since the acrylic factor would make it a little too stifling as a pullover. It’s been good bus knitting so far.

With Venezia and Glowing also on the go, we’ll just have to see which of these 3 sweaters can cross the finish line in March. ::ominous organ music:: Heh.

Even more remarkable is that, up until Saturday, the Urban Aran was the only thing in my Ravelry queue (which, if you’re not on Ravelry yet, is the place where you can file away patterns on a ‘to-knit’ list, and include notes on what yarn you’d like to use, etc). Now, my queue looks like this:

I realized a few weeks ago that my queue had stopped being the fun exciting wish list that it was in the beginning, and had started instead to make my stash look like a cumbersome and foreboding to-do list. Rather than making me happy about all the waiting potential projects in my stash, it was increasing my stash guilt to unreasonable levels. Since I’m trying right now to have a better relationship with my stash – i.e. wherein I knit from it more often and remind myself to “go shopping in my stash” for new projects – I just decided to make that queue into a fresh blank slate. From now on, when things go into my queue they really will be just the next 1 or 2 projects I want on deck, and anything else can happily rest in my ‘favourites’ and web bookmarks. I’ll decide on new projects one at a time, as the need arises.

Oh, stash psychology. Fun times.

In other news, the Korknisse and I are all moved out of Chez Beatrice and are temporarily relocated at my parents’ place (not far), finishing out the term, finishing out my dissertation, and continuing the job hunt. It’s been a long time since I actually lived at home so it’ll be an interesting adventure, but I will say that it is good to actually have all my possessions in only one location. I’m hoping to be able to do some decent sorting out and figure out what I need to keep, what can be recycled/garage-saled/Goodwilled/given away, what just needs to get tossed, and so on.

Just as long as I still get to keep my stash. A knitter has to draw the line somewhere. ;)